Making it anywhere

They easily cracked New York, now two young men behind fashion's hottest label are gearing up for global fame. Nicki Goskin reports.

Proenza Schouler's
genesis reads like a
Manhattan fairytale.
Jack McCollough
and Lazaro
Hernandez are only
25 and already their
label (their mothers' maiden
names) is the talk of the town:
it's in swanky stores all over the
city and featured on magazine
covers.

Just two years ago, they were
students at Parsons School of
Design in New York, preparing
their thesis project. Peter
Arnold, the head of the school,
was so impressed by the collection
that he convinced Julie
Gilhart, the powerful fashion
director for Barney's department
store, to take a look.

She was so wowed that even
though its buying season was
officially over, Barney's bought
the entire collection. The pair
hastily borrowed money from
their parents: Barney's asked for
a spring collection as well.

Since then, they have won the
Perry Ellis award for new talent
from the Council of Fashion
Designers of America and their
gorgeous clothes have been
worn by celebrities including
Demi Moore, Debra Messing
and Kristin Davis.

You might be tempted to
believe that, after all these
accolades and sudden success,
McCollough and Hernandez,
who live and work together, in a
loft in Chinatown, would have
turned into shrieking divas,
but, thankfully, that's not even
close to the truth. They are
exceedingly sweet, self-deprecating
and still pinching themselves
over their swift ascension
in the fashion world.

They still
pepper their speech with "like"
and giggle when discussing the
pitfalls of working together.
(They're so hot right now
that their names have been
mentioned along with Marc
Jacobs and Alexander McQueen
as possible replacements for
Tom Ford at Gucci. Jack turns
red at the idea. "Nah, they are
just rumours. Just people
talking. It's flattering that
people are mentioning us with
big designers who are up for
the job.")

Both entered design by a
circuitous route. McCollough,
who grew up in New Jersey,
enrolled in the San Francisco
Art Institute to study glassblowing.
Hernandez, from
Miami was studying to be a
doctor until a summer visit to
New York made him realise that
the fashion world he'd fantasised
about while reading
Vogue and Harper's Bazaar in
his mother's beauty salon was
in fact real.

The two are obsessed with
silhouette, colour and proportion.
Their clothes are sleek,
simple, yet sexy, with an eye for
detail.

Proenza SchoulerPicture: AFP

"At the end of the day,
people want to look good and
they want to look sexy and
that's what we want to create,"
says McCollough.

Their design gurus are Coco
Chanel and Christian Dior.
"We're really interested in
that richness, that attention to
detail, that craftsmanship," says
Hernandez.

"Christian Dior definitely
worked in the same way as us,"
explains McCollough. "Each
season was about one silhouette
and that was kind of like a
formula and he would plug
things into that formula, which
is kind of the way we try to
work as well."

And how do they come up
with ideas?
"We both have a similar set
of references, so it's really
abstract. Maybe we are inspired
by some old painting for like
colour or the shape of something
for a new silhouette.
Everything comes together in a
weird way and from there we
make an inspiration book and
we start sketching," says
McCollough.

Interestingly enough for
designers so young, they do not
draw ideas from film.
"We're not huge movie buffs
to tell you the truth," confesses
Hernandez.

"I'm not going to lie and say,
'We're very inspired by movies
of the '40s and '50s.' We're
inspired by old picture books
from the '40s. Besides, you can
see more in books. In movies,
they move too much. In books,
it's there. It's captured.